Spaceflight (Ships) Ideas and Fixes

Zulah

Since I started flying around pewpewing everything in sight I've been putting together a small list of ideas and changes. Would love to hear other thoughts on some of these. I have more but I don't want to write a wall and I'd like to hear more input!

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-- Possible Fixes:

More noticeable difference with ships speeds. 10% speed feels the same as 50% speed quite often

Lockon:

-Lockon should offer some real benefits.

-IE: autofire outside cone at lesser damage, or faster autofire.

Shipsims:

-Shipsim power costs should be lowered across the board

-Shipsims severly slow a ship down to the point of being unusable.
-A shipsim with just barely enough cycles to run a single missile (no cannons) on a destroyer causes the ship to be unflyable.

Ship missile damage too low? 50-75 damage? (I've only done a tiny bit of testing do to the shipsim/cycles issue)

Tractor beam should have its require cycle use halved. (This is really just to aid mining at the moment)
Tractor beam does not work against other players (Tested 40 times with Destroyer vs Interceptor, always fails to have an effect)

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-- Ideas:

Artifact to increase beacon balance speed

Different weapon/cannon types that can shoot outside cone for lower damage. Side Cannons, Rear Cannons

Possible new Tricks:

See the speed at which another ship/denizen is traveling. (Who doesn't love trying to chase a binary going 3k. 1k. 100. 3k. 100. 3k.. you get the point. If you could see their speed you could better match it leading to more fun and interesting chase battles)

90 degree turn

Full speed (go from 0 to 3k instantly) incur damage (possible player damage too from acceleration)

Fyrel

A neat ship mod would be a grapple launcher.

Fire it at a ship and you add your mass to theirs and vice versa, in addition to keeping your distance less than or equal to the distance at which the other ship was grabbed until the astromechs tear it off or you release the line.

If you can still move, you can tow ships or, with a big enough ship, recreate the Nantucket sleigh ride.

Arsentar

Would be nice if captaincy progression made sense. We learn how to use minor overloads and skip drives way before we learn how to actually fly a ship that can properly hold a skip drive

Zulah

Arsentar said:

Would be nice if captaincy progression made sense. We learn how to use minor overloads and skip drives way before we learn how to actually fly a ship that can properly hold a skip drive

I brought this up with @Tecton as well. In a destroyer now and skip drive isn't usable still. Also with the current shipsim setup being a pain you woulldn't want to have one anyway. The cycles needed to run one means your ship would take 11 seconds to move one room under 100% thrust and speed

Annesani

It sounds like I shouldn't invest in a new ship if they are in need of an overhaul. 


To add to the discussion: Someone mentioned a SHIP BROADCAST in another thread. It'd act like a shout that only went to other ships (and maybe stranded passengers). Probably would be useful for ship use and while spacewalking. 

Tecton

Zulah said:

Arsentar said:

Would be nice if captaincy progression made sense. We learn how to use minor overloads and skip drives way before we learn how to actually fly a ship that can properly hold a skip drive

I brought this up with @Tecton as well. In a destroyer now and skip drive isn't usable still. Also with the current shipsim setup being a pain you woulldn't want to have one anyway. The cycles needed to run one means your ship would take 11 seconds to move one room under 100% thrust and speed

Yeah, both are on the radar when time permits!

Zile

Incursion spawn timers seem to be all over the place. Easy/medium sometimes go minutes without spawns. Also if more than one person is in the zone you might never see one.
Also xp based on damage done so you can crew up and tackle harder stuff.

Zile

Message telling you when you LEAVE a pvp zone or incursion.

Zulah

Affordable Voidgates for larger ship types. I had to stop using them from light freighter on and they are such a fun/QoL feature

Being able to repair hull or shields while docked at a major station without repairkits. Just pay a flat repair cost.

Repairkits scaling with ship type. I feel like it takes 100s of repairkits to repair hull on a Destroyer

Vaughn

Stop rounding ship speed in the display or give us the real number in GMCP.

Capturable Voidgates
Capturable Planets

Zulah

I would love ship info in gmcp

Fyrel

Vaughn said:

Capturable Voidgates

The voidgates are, with the possible exception of the cleax gate, fully under the control of the y'saari to the point that the only currency they accept to use them became the ubiquitous currency across the sector. The system they use to defend them is elder race tech described as practically impenetrable.

kamyr

Lock-on indications for smol boys (anything displayed with an &). If there's a color change, it's not obvious to me.

Minor xp gains for repairing damage and systems (support the tanks!)
XP gain on hits/damage dealt/any future 'afflictions'. I'm okay with the killing blow getting the bulk of the reward, but I'm also not opposed to a pure damage-based xp split over current.
Flag cargo as 'claimed' for anyone in the crew of the person getting the killing blow (or alternatively first aggro but not my preference). Trying to recover claimed cargo would result in you being open shippk. Not sure if there should be an alert for it.

Those three together would make fleets more of a possibility plus add some potential SPACE DRAMA.

Nykara

kamyr said:

Lock-on indications for smol boys (anything displayed with an &). If there's a color change, it's not obvious to me.

I actually think a lock-on indication at all would be very useful for ship combat. Large-scale combat is a bit of a headache right now (had a few cosmpiercer space fights that were more than a little confusing with 9+ people in the fray)

Rylek

Ship refit props on, actually working would be nice

Zile

If your ship is turning and you want to pause the turn on the current heading you should be able to SHIP TURN Direction-you're-already-facing to pause. Instead of always having to overshoot a turn. Say I'm turning from E to S. Suddenly my target moves to SE and I'm also facing SE. I have no choice but to let the S turn complete or start a new one in the opposite direction that will then try to complete. This will make larger vessels near impossible to target as the turn speed increases. With this you can still circle a larger ship in a smaller by staying ahead of it's turn but you'll have to actually be skillful/vigilant about not putting yourself in it's cone. 

Zulah

WTB Voidgate artifact pass or functioning skipdrive!

https://ada-young.appspot.com/pastebin/dVyiJnpk

More than 1 credit per voidgate cost in cruiser

Fyrel

I'd like a proximity sensor style thingamabob that tells you if you're on a collision course with something within a certain range, that way you don't have to rely on the relatively small visible map, and can make adjustments ahead of time so that you don't lose all your momentum by hitting something.

kamyr

SHIP MARK (Ship#/Creature#) 1-9
Replace the icon for the marked ship/creature (ships would show as -5, 5- etc, creatures as just the #) with the number given, and allow targeting via that number (eg ship weapon fire cannon# 1).

Paqu

I would like the options to change the colors on the map during sspaceflight.  The red colors on dark background are nnot visible enough for colorblind people,  thus making ship incursions a bit difficult.

Paqu

Are we going to have the"'bigger ships must be faster than smaller ships" theme here? I think it's supposed to be vice vversa, don't you think? RP Wise, I would like to be the pilot of a small but fast starship. But since acceleration is defined by leftover energy after components and modules, it's the bigger ships that ended up being ffaster. So I only succeeded in small part but not the fast part. Can we have a fix on this, please?  Otherwise,  we'll have a cruiser speeding ahead of the smaller ships on formation.  Which I tthink is thematically wrong,  SciFi-wise.

Cubey

Paqu said:

Are we going to have the"'bigger ships must be faster than smaller ships" theme here? I think it's supposed to be vice vversa, don't you think? RP Wise, I would like to be the pilot of a small but fast starship. But since acceleration is defined by leftover energy after components and modules, it's the bigger ships that ended up being ffaster. So I only succeeded in small part but not the fast part. Can we have a fix on this, please?  Otherwise,  we'll have a cruiser speeding ahead of the smaller ships on formation.  Which I tthink is thematically wrong,  SciFi-wise.

Nope, it's "bigger means slower" that is thematically wrong. It's an idea that has successfully spread through popular culture, but that's because popular culture perceives space as an ocean only black and sometimes three-dimensional. Seafaring ships are slower if they're bigger, but in space there's no (or minimal if you want to be pedantic about it) friction so acceleration is a simple matter of thrust/mass, while velocity can theoretically reach lightspeed and would go towards infinity if not for relativistic effects - Starmourn limits that with a hard speed cap and for good reason.

Considering that larger ships can dedicate a larger percentage of their mass total to engines (because necessities like life support etc are relatively smaller), if you're making hard or semi-hard sci-fi? Big ones should go faster. Small craft have the advantage of being more manouverable and Starmourn already represents that by faster turning speeds. I don't see any issues here.

Matlkael

In practice, maneuverability seems to be the more valuable of the two, too. As a smaller and more agile ship, you can fly circles around a bigger opponent and hit them where it hurts (behind to hit engines, on the side to hit components).